"Woods History".
In 1983 Tony Goulden, then in his early sixties...
after a working lifetime sat behind a desk decided to retire and buy some woodland, having read somewhere that there were good tax incentives and grants for doing anything.
Armed with zero knowledge and a black Labrador dog, who thought it was a great idea, he embarked on what more by luck than judgement has become a legacy for his children and grandchildren.
The woods, around seven miles...
from his home in Hampshire, were initially in two halves separated by a 100 foot strip that belonged to a different estate to the one he had bought the rest from.
About five years later he managed to buy this and join the woods, but to start with he had two entrances and two quite different bits of woodland. One half was mostly 2 to 3 hundred year old larch trees whilst the other was a good mixture of Beech, Oak and Ash.
Task one was...
to completely clear fell the larch wood and replant with hundreds of Oak and Beech in rows. After Dick the Tree had cleared the site it occurred to him that replanting all those trees was going to be hard work.
He wrote to his 6 children telling them that this task was too much for one aging man and his dog. One daughter wrote back offering use of her dog. By the end of 1985 most of the trees were planted and now are starting to form a canopy. In a mere 50 or so years they will be ready for felling.
By this time in the other wood...
Tony had started selling hardwoods. He had acquired a bit of equipment including, most usefully an accomplice Harold a local man a year or two older who was glad to get of the house following the death of his wife.
Over the next dozen or so years helped by Harold he built the business up benefiting from bumper years when trees were blown down in the gales of 1987 and 1990.
As they both entered their seventies...
Tony was slowing with bad health and Harold with doing all the work. A heart operation in 1995 perked Tony up for a year or two. At the beginning of 1998 Harold had hung up his boots and Tony was looking at ways of running the business closer to home, from his bed if possible.
He decided to sell the woods back to the local estate, sell off the equipment and rent a farm building opposite his house so that he could keep his stock nearby.
Halfway through 1998...
the deal fell through and he decided to open another company with a mobile saw, employ younger people to do all the work and spend as much time as possible directing operations from his bed.
The saw was bought from Canada, staff recruited and vast sums spent. Sadly he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died before the end of the year and before the new venture had proved itself.
The family, who had studiously avoided...
getting involved with the woods for fear of getting lumbered with hard work, were left with the dilemma of what to do with the woods and a business that, whilst keeping the old boy occupied, was unlikely to sustain itself without someone local to do what Tony had, preferably for nothing.
The business was saved by...
Brian a local man and friend of the family. He had helped the old man on and off over the years particularly after Harold had hung his boots up the previous January.
We made the decision to close the mobile sawing company and the rest of the decisions made themselves.
The family decided...
to keep the woods and Brian offered to help maintain them. Myself, Paul the youngest son, came down from London once a week initially to sort, what needed sorting, but soon found it to be an escape from the smoke and the real job.
A few years on Brian...
deals with any phone enquiries and I deal with the Internet and e-mail enquiries and between us we muddle through. The sales of the hardwood help pay for the maintenance of the woods.
As neither Brian nor I do it for the money there is no pressure to try to force sales. The woods have benefited by our conservation work. There is a stone bench memorial to Tony under which his ashes are buried.
Tony’s other children...
and their children come to the woods at various weekends of the year for Easter egg hunts, bonfires and rainy Barbie’s. By the time his grandchildren are at the age he was when he planted the Oak and Beech, the trees will be ready for felling and we can start again.
Paul Goulden.
Copyright Goulden Management Limited 1999